The Last Song by Nicholas Sparks

here.”
    “I want to be here,” Steve said. “You’re my father. Why? Don’t you want me here?”
    “Maybe I don’t want you to see me die.”
    “I’ll leave if you want.”
    His father made a noise akin to a snort. “See, that’s your problem. You want me to make the decision for you. That’s always been your problem.”
    “Maybe I just want to spend time with you.”
    “You want to? Or did your wife want you to?”
    “Does it matter?”
    His dad tried to smile, but it came out like a grimace. “I don’t know. Does it?”
    From his spot at the piano, Steve heard an approaching car. The headlights flashed through the window and raced across the walls, and for an instant he thought that Ronnie might have gotten a ride home. But just as quickly the light shrank to nothing, and Ronnie still wasn’t here.
    It was after midnight. He wondered whether he should try to find her.
    Some years ago, before Ronnie had stopped talking to him, he and Kim had gone to see a marriage counselor whose office was located near Gramercy Park, in a renovated building. Steve remembered sitting beside Kim on a couch and facing a thin, angular woman in her thirties who wore gray slacks and liked to press her fingertips together. When she did, Steve noticed she didn’t wear a wedding band.
    Steve was uncomfortable; the counseling had been Kim’s idea, and she’d already gone alone. This was their first joint session, and by way of introduction, she told the counselor that Steve kept his feelings bottled up inside but that it wasn’t his fault. Neither of his parents had been expressive people, she said. Nor had he grown up in a family that discussed their problems. He sought out music as an escape, she went on to say, and it was only through the piano that he learned to feel anything at all.
    “Is that true?” the counselor asked.
    “My parents were good people,” he answered.
    “That doesn’t answer the question.”
    “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
    The counselor sighed. “Okay, how about this? We all know what happened and why you’re here. I think what Kim wants is for you to tell her how it made you feel.”
    Steve considered the question. He wanted to say that all this talk of feelings was irrelevant. That emotions come and go and can’t be controlled, so there’s no reason to worry about them. That in the end, people should be judged by their actions, since in the end, it was actions that defined everyone.
    But he didn’t say this. Instead, he threaded his fingers together. “You want to know how it made me feel.”
    “Yes. But don’t tell me.” She gestured to his wife. “Tell Kim.”
    He faced his wife, sensing her anticipation.
    “I felt…”
    He was in an office with his wife and a stranger, engaged in the type of conversation he could never have imagined growing up. It was a few minutes past ten o’clock in the morning, and he’d been back in New York for only a few days. His tour had taken him to twenty-some different cities, while Kim worked as a paralegal at a Wall Street law firm.
    “I felt…,” he said again.
    When the clock struck one a.m., Steve went outside to stand on the back porch. The blackness of the night had given way to the purple light of the moon, making it possible to see up and down the beach. He hadn’t seen her in sixteen hours and was concerned, if not quite worried. He trusted she was smart and careful enough to take care of herself.
    Okay, maybe he was a little worried.
    And despite himself, he wondered if she was going to vanish tomorrow, the same way she had today. And whether it would be the same story day after day, all summer.
    Spending time with Jonah had been like finding special treasure, and he wanted to spend time with her as well. He turned from the porch and went back inside.
    As he took his seat at the piano, he felt it again, the same thing he’d told the marriage counselor as he’d sat on the couch.
    He felt empty.

10

    R onnie
    F or a